


Two Stars, Keeping Motion

by disenchanted



Category: Henry IV Part 1 - Shakespeare
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Enemies With Benefits, Fight Sex, Hate Sex, M/M, Missing Scene, historically accurate arrows to the face, tender nose realignment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 04:03:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5233337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disenchanted/pseuds/disenchanted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the eve of the Battle of Shrewsbury, Hotspur receives a visit from Harry Monmouth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Stars, Keeping Motion

**Author's Note:**

> Forgive me; I had a mighty need. There's very little in the way of textual accuracy and even less in the way of historical accuracy, but there is a lot of blood, and a smidgen of sex.

Hotspur very nearly killed him. In the instance that the son of the king (or rather the usurper) one is doing one's damndest to depose should come upon one suddenly in the early hours of the morning of the coming battle, one assumes he means to kill one, and must be killed himself before he succeeds. What a shock, then, to hear him say quietly, 'Consider this an intermission; put down your sword.'

Circling them was the chattering and clattering of Hotspur's army, who sat around their fires and waited for the sun to rise. To the south, across the fields and the Severn River, glowed the fires of those fourteen thousand under Monmouth's command. Yet Monmouth was here, in the copse behind the tent in which Douglas and Worcester stood over their maps. He was a specter, still and bright in the moonlight.

'I will not put down my sword,' said Hotspur. 

'Well, put it in my body, if you will,' said Monmouth, gesturing to his vulnerable chest and stomach. He wore no armour; beneath his cloak he wore a gipon and hose. 'If you won't do that then put it in its sheath.'

'You taunt me, Monmouth. No, I will not. I shan't kill you till you meet me on the field tomorrow—'

'I think you mean today? When I left my camp it was past two o'clock.'

'—But I will strike you in the shoulder so you cannot hold your sword! In faith, I've been humiliated well enough that I know how to go about humiliating. If you limped back, bleeding, to your father's tent, he would think you a malingerer—that is to say as void of honour as you have been since he seized the crown. Would he trust your change of heart, then? Would he believe you true to him, as you pretend to be? Whether your trueness is true or not, I think it is easily undermined, and shall fall like a cliff overhanging.

'So depart,' said Hotspur finally, panting with the effort of making a speech on one breath. 'Depart, or do what you have come to do.'

Drawing back the hood of his cloak, Monmouth said, 'If you believe I've come to kill you, let me put your fears to rest. At least I shall not try it till dawn breaks and we go to arms. I have a question to ask of you, the answer to which will satisfy me only I hear it from your mouth. That is why I've not sent a messenger. Anyway I've little patience for intermediaries: besides the slowness, I think one ought to see one's opposition face-to-face.'

'I don't call it "facing you" to face your princely mask,' said Hotspur.

'This is my own face, as much as any face can be one's own. So face it: bring up your eyes, Harry Percy, and we shall look at each other, and see each other true enough. Yes, good. Now if we do meet in battle tomorrow we shall know each other. But we may not meet. The question: why did you deny my offer to fight in single combat?' 

'Why in God's name should I have accepted it?' spat Hotspur. 'Whether I won or lost, I would be proving my submission to your father. I would be ripping away my honour like—like my skin from my body. Nothing in my face can tell you more than that.'

In a gesture which was as likely to end in death as any offer of single combat, Monmouth reached out to take Hotspur's chin in his ungloved hand. His arm pressed against the blade of Hotspur's sword, which still struck out between them. If Hotspur liked he could have severed Monmouth's arm at the shoulder, or run the sword's point into Monmouth's haughty, handsome face. But he was entranced, he was taken; he convulsed internally. Monmouth's fingers scraped against the furrows of coarse hair on Hotspur's unshaven jaw.

'How much of your rage I see here,' said Monmouth, peering at him through the darkness. 'That, and pride badly crippled. It is less than I would see under the sun. I do regret I couldn't have met with you once more, before you became a traitor.'

'You mean before I lent my strength to your father's cause? We did meet each other then. You remember: you were Richard's charge, and were as fine an imitation of the king as I had ever seen. I might have taken you for his son. And if you were his son I would take you as my prince now. But you are only Bolingbroke's son. Lord, I hate looking at you! There's nothing more vile than a man who rests in stolen splendour—no, splendour he'd not the guts to steal himself.'

'Ah, you would love me if I were Richard's son, but will not love me now, though I am the image of Richard's son. I think you would like to love me. If you accept the mercy of your king, we shall have much love between—'

The sword dropped into the grass, and there lay abandoned. For Hotspur had leapt forward and taken Monmouth by his cloak, and driven him back till he was pinned against the bark of a gnarled tree. He then shoved Monmouth, so as to stay his resistance, and found him unresisting. Monmouth's head knocked against the bark, his boots scrabbled against knotted roots; he groaned like any man would with the wind knocked out of him, but did not call out.

'There is hatred between us,' said Hotspur, 'a fiery gulf of it; a hellish river of hatred. No ship of Bolingbroke's, no ship of yours, could ford that burning water. The ship would dash against the rocks—and shatter like a skull! God help me, I would shatter your skull. I would go to the block for it; I would have my head on a pike for the chance.'

'You have the chance now,' gasped Monmouth. 'Why not do it, and have it done, brave Percy?'

Monmouth tugged Hotspur's right hand up from where it held his cloak, and clasped it; he lifted it till Hotspur was cradling his head in his dirt-streaked palm, soiling his curls. It occurred to Hotspur, in a moment of clarity, that he had never touched Monmouth, not even when they were boys together. The last person whose head Hotspur had cradled was Kate: after they had fucked, they spent the final sliver of those two hours holding each other fondly. Hotspur did not know, and could not imagine, who last touched Monmouth fondly.

'You would deny it, but there is some fidelity in you yet,' said Monmouth, laughing. 'It matters not to me how bitter your speech, or what treasonous things you say in the heat of anger. I should like to save the blood of our two armies, even if my own blood should be spilt.'

'So bleed,' said Hotspur, for he could not stay himself: he struck his fist into Monmouth's face. When he saw there was no blood (Monmouth was wide-eyed, but his eyes were like a madman's), he punched Monmouth in the nose, and gloried, then, in the blood that spurted blackly down his lip and chin.

Together they fell to the grass, grappling, grasping at what they could of each other: a lock of hair, a forearm, a fistful of fabric. Monmouth had a lean strength which carried his punches into Hotspur with cracks and thumps, resounding. He struck Hotspur's face; he put his hands around Hotspur's throat; he beat Hotspur's head into the ground. 

It hurt madly—Christ, it did hurt! The pain vitalised Hotspur. He fell and rose anew, emboldened by vengefulness enough to pin Monmouth beneath him. With his thighs latched to either side of Monmouth's thin chest, he struck Monmouth till his nose and mouth were flooded with his noble blood. 

To see Monmouth bleed, to hear him sputter and choke, made Hotspur's prick stiff. Hotspur's desire was as sharp as the pain that burst in his head; his mouth hung open till his own blood dribbled out. Monmouth knew: Hotspur's prick pressed into the tender, unguarded flesh of Monmouth's stomach. Monmouth ought to have been ashamed, Hotspur thought. The fact of it was cruel and vulgar; Hotspur might as well have spat in his face. Yet Monmouth lay beneath Hotspur, panting, twisting to spit into the grass.

When Monmouth cleared his mouth sufficiently to speak, he bared his pink-tinged teeth in a smile and said, 'I see now why you hesitate to kill me.' He laughed; he coughed. 'You would have my body: you would have me in pain and in pleasure both. If I were dead you could have me in nothing but death. Oh, Percy, oh, Harry. How easily honour is thwarted. You are base, as much as I am base when in a bawdy-house. We are both of us creatures. If our stomachs rumble we set to our beefsteaks. If we've cockstands, well, we set to—'

Hotspur put his hand over Monmouth's mouth. Because Monmouth's nose was broken, his breath was stopped; he wrestled against Hotspur till he could get his teeth sunk into the meat of Hotspur's hand. He reached beneath Hotspur's gipon and clutched his prick through his braies, as if to show Hotspur that he could crush him in his fist. Hotspur, laughing acidly, rolled his hips into the touch.

'Don't offer what you won't give,' said Hotspur.

'I will give it,' said Monmouth hoarsely. 'Did I not bleed, having told you I would my blood were spilt? So I tell you you may have me.'

What grace Monmouth possessed, giving himself up: it was as if he was made to be deposed, to be brought low. His eyes were steady and his lips were parted, shuddering with each laboured breath. Yet he had a sense of sovereignty about him, learnt rather than inherited. He must have believed he had some other body, some greater body, which could not be sullied by spit or spend. When Hotspur demanded he unhook his hose and pull down his braies, and turn over onto his stomach, he acceded with the thoughtlessness of a king banishing someone for whom he no longer cared.

Then Monmouth was lying on his belly in the grass, his gipon pushed up his back and his braies torn down, baring his arse and thighs. One side of his face was pressed into the grass; Hotspur, sprawled next to him, saw the strange, shattered line of his nose in the moonlight, and his curls falling over his forehead. 

Hotspur fumbled to push his braies down enough to loose his cock and balls, whereupon he squeezed his shaft in his fist, whispering to himself, 'Oh, Christ's wounds. Christ's teeth.' For he felt himself forced into some consciousness of what he did, and what he would do. His father was ill, Glendower was fourteen days out. He could be dead in five hours, never mind a day, or fourteen days. But he would not turn his back— By God—

Kneeling between Monmouth's spread thighs, Hotspur gathered thick, viscous spit in the back of his throat and coughed it out onto his palm, which he then slicked down his shaft. He hunched down over Monmouth's prone body and pressed his prick into the crease of Monmouth's arse, letting it slide through the sweat that in the July heat had begun to soak through Monmouth's braies. Monmouth's cry caught in his throat; Hotspur, with his chest pressed to Monmouth's back, felt him choke it out, heaving. 

'Is this not your last supper,' said Hotspur, his chin flung over Monmouth's neck, his mouth by Monmouth's ear. 'Before you are slain, before Mortimer takes your father's crown, you would have some pleasure for yourself, to carry into the grave. Take it, then—take it! Will I not hear you howl, as you've done with your prick in some commoner's arse? Have you no lust in you, now, Prince? Howl!'

The noise Monmouth made was not howling precisely: it was a low throat-tearing, it was the wail of a beast felled and bleeding. With each stroke of Hotspur's prick between the cheeks of his arse he made this noise. Hotspur, in the same rhythm, gave the groans of the hunter triumphant. 

When Hotspur spent, he did not pull back: he wet the dimples in the small of Monmouth's back. Rising to his knees, he slapped Monmouth's arse for good measure; having done that, he flung himself into the grass.

Floating down from the trees around them came the robin's song, herald of the dawn. The air was moist, the sky was grey; the outlines of the full branches were starkly visible, swaying. Smoke billowed up from the campfires, and a stone sunk down Hotspur's gut. Beside him he heard the rustling of Monmouth turning onto his back. Then the soft sounds of Monmouth pulling at his prick.

'If you were to lend me your hand, Percy,' said Monmouth thickly, 'I would consider it a mercy worthy of forgiveness. I shall not ask you to fight me to the finish, merely to bring me to my finish. What say you?'

'I say I will,' said Hotspur, 'within some few hours….' And he propped himself up to watch Monmouth, lithe and trembling, pull ever more ardently, till at last he dug his heels into the earth and flung back his bloody face. 

It was light enough that colours were beginning to show. Hotspur saw Monmouth's red lips, his gilt hair, his cloak's mud-streaked scarlet; and when he opened them, his eyes, light as a robin's egg. Monmouth's hands, resting now on his stomach, were speckled with scrapes which Hotspur had not seen in the dark. Hotspur was sorry, obscurely, that such a body should so soon be swollen and blue. But would he spare this other Harry, this Harry so finely illuminated? No…he thought not; he would not.

 

* * *

 

'—Still,' commanded Hotspur, with all the ragged and impracticable tenderness he could muster. He was kneeling before Monmouth, who sat cross-legged on the ground, giving Hotspur's chest a straight look. 'Shh…shh. If you move when I do it, you'll put it out of joint again. Will you be still?'

'I am,' said Monmouth, 'I will.'

Hotspur put his fingers to either side of Monmouth's nose and crushed inwards till, with a noise like a bone cracking, the line of it snapped straight again. Monmouth gulped, he shuddered; his eyes were clenched shut with such vigour that his cheeks and brow twitched. 

This was, thought Hotspur, as close as he would come to giving Monmouth satisfaction; to seeing Monmouth with his head on soft furs and his body bared entirely. He wondered whether, had Bolingbroke not returned before his six years were up, he and Monmouth might not have gone to bed as mates. By our Lady! It was a wild conceit. Here was Monmouth in front of him, blowing clots of blood from his fresh-set nose. Having no handkerchief, Hotspur spat on his fingers and rubbed fiercely at the dried brown blood flecking Monmouth's face.

'Stop that,' said Monmouth, tugging at Hotspur's wrist, 'I can do it well enough myself.'

'How is a man to clean his face when he has no looking-glass?' said Hotspur. He used his shirtsleeve to wipe Monmouth's bruised cheek. 'That is the nature of your vanity: you would look well, but you would not look at yourself.' 

'Ah, is that so? … I think you are a leper who condemns another for his spots. We are vain men, you and I; for we are men, and all men are sacks stuffed full of vanities.'

Hotspur, standing, muttered, 'And all your words are wind.'

Monmouth stood in turn. 'In faith, they are, Percy,' he said, smiling severely. 'And all my gestures the twitchings of a dancer's limbs, and all my passions passing dreams.'

'All right, up to the gallows with you,' said Hotspur, and waved Monmouth off.

Though Monmouth's face was wretched, though his clothing was crumpled, though he had lost the brooch that fastened his cloak, he took care to brush away all errant flecks of grass and dirt. He looked like a boy who had had a tumble in a field—well, he was so. When they met again, he would be resplendent in a carapace of engraved steel, bearing a flag blazoned with the St George's Cross. Perhaps, from his open visor, his fair eyes would glint: that would be enough for Hotspur to know him by.  

 

* * *

 

The engraved steel was dimmed with mud by the time Hotspur found Monmouth. His helmet was off; his sweat-sodden curls hung limply about his face. In his left cheek there was a dark blot which leaked a steady stream of blood, and Hotspur realised that there must be a bodkin-head still embedded in his flesh, though the shaft had been pulled out. All the same, Monmouth fought. When he saw Hotspur he flung down his slash-streaked shield. 

'Well then, Harry Percy,' said Monmouth. 'We've rode a day or so past the hour of forgiveness. Are you contented?'

'Well enough, Harry Monmouth. Well enough am I contented to keep from forgiving.' Kicking his toe into the soil, he said, 'I will give you the dust of your bones.'

Hotspur was swinging forth on the line of the dial's shadow, which bore him nearer and nearer to the hour. The shadows of the trees were lengthening; dusk was falling to the horizon. How richly red was the dusk…. If it were not for the ring of steel along steel he might have heard sparrows. 

But the sparrows were in the trees, and Hotspur was on the ground, dragging Monmouth down alongside him. He got his hands around Monmouth's throat at the same time Monmouth got his sword in Hotspur's stomach. Lord, thought Hotspur, how the dial's point did swing. 

' _Why_ ,' cried Monmouth, twisting the blade in Hotspur's belly, 'did you not submit to my vanity? _Why_ did you not pry your life from me? Oh— Percy, oh, mad Percy! Hateful Percy! Damned Percy! Why do you, who are so proud, condescend to bleed?'

'Oh, because it boots me,' said Hotspur weakly, 'to see you sorry. Grief's like shame; it lasts. Well, it lasts to the last. Valiant Harry … young Harry. I will show you dust yet. You are dust, as much as I; dust and food for—'

'For the devil,' said Harry, and rose to his knees. With the point of his sword in the soil and his hands clasped to the hilt, he prayed for the Hotspur's immortal soul.

A great many bodies were strewn about these gentle fields: bodies stretched thin with age, bodies in the flush of youth; bodies rounded, bodies attenuated, bodies hulking and virile yet strangely still. Oh, bodies sprawled like drunkards, bodies rigid as effigies…. Bodies made red by well-swung swords; bodies that had caught arrows and fallen from a horse; bodies that had been trampled by horses whose riders had fallen. Of all these, Harry was arrested by the sight of the body before him. 

Percy had complained that he saw nothing but Harry's princely mask. Now Harry saw Percy's death-mask. It was so very like his living face. His eyes were open, bright and grey; spit and blood gleamed from his open mouth. If not for his stillness he would have appeared in ecstasy; he was like a wood-carving which appeared in ecstasy. Was this thing before Harry not the thing Percy had been the night before? No, it was a fine counterfeit. Even in death Percy was the image of his prince—that is to say, alive. Harry thought he could kiss Percy's face yet! 

He did: he knelt and touched his lips to those other lips, and found them bloody and breathless. The sensation was like that of waking from a dream, whereupon all that one had seen and felt became figures in a tapestry, or a handful of words. 

Thus awakened, Harry retrieved his helmet and fitted it over his head; and, in the interest of living at least till the battle was won, closed the visor over his bleeding face. 

 

* * *

 


End file.
